XSL Formatting Objects

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XSL Formatting Objects, or XSL-FO, is an XML markup language for document formatting. XSL-FO is part of XSL, a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and formatting of XML data. The other parts of XSL are XSLT and XPath.

XML documents, unlike HTML and XHTML documents, have no inherent, implicit, or default layout format. XSL-FO is a language that can be used to specify physical layout, colouring, typography, etc, of XML documents for screen, print, and other media. In this sense its role is similar to that of CSS, but it is more powerful and flexible, particularly with regard to pagination and scrolling.

XSL-FO, unlike CSS, is itself expressed in well-formed and valid XML. This increases its flexibility still further, allowing XSL-FO, for example, to be mixed with XSLT in the same stylesheet if required.

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